Principal Engineer

The Leadership Agency Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 175,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

10% bonus

401(k) with match

Healthcare benefits (medical/dental/VA

Remote (US-based)

Job summary

The Leadership Agency Inc. is seeking a C# architect who guides backend engineering decisions and containerized runtime strategy for a multi‑tenant K–12 SaaS platform hosted on AWS.

You’ll focus on production behavior, scalability, and observability while partnering with a small cross‑functional team of engineers and IT staff. You will own architecture at the code level, review designs for long‑term durability, and help migrate from local deployments to containerized cloud runtimes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years professional software engineering experience.
• Strong architectural ownership in SaaS environments.
• Hands-on container experience in AWS (ECS preferred).
• Understanding of production-system behavior and observability.
• US-based candidates only.
• Bonus: regulated environments (SOC2, FERPA, COPPA) and container migrations.

Responsibilities

• Define service boundaries, APIs, and async workflows with a systems mindset.
• Review designs and code for long-term scalability and reliability.
• Unblock engineers at the architecture and coding level.
• Harden observability, resilience, and CI/CD integration in production.

Skills

C#

ASP.NET Core

Architectural ownership

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

AWS ECS

Job description

Are you a C# architect who understands how systems actually behave in production on AWS?

Do you love taking a SaaS platform from “it runs” to “it scales, it’s observable, it’s resilient”?
If guiding engineers, modernizing runtime environments, and building containerized services on AWS sounds like your lane — keep reading.

What’s the Job?

This is an architect-first, hands‑on technical authority role. You’ll guide backend engineering decisions, shape containerized runtime strategy, and help evolve a modern K–12 SaaS platform serving millions of students.

This is not a sys ops position.
This is not a pure feature-delivery IC role.

This is for someone with deep C# / ASP.NET Core experience who understands:

How services communicate in production

How applications behave inside containers

How CI/CD impacts runtime stability

You’ll report to the VP of Engineering and work cross‑functionally with engineering (4 FTE + 2 contract engineers) and IT (5 total; mix of sys admins and DevOps).

Who is the Company?

A forward‑looking K–12 edtech SaaS organization focused on digital literacy, AI literacy, and responsible tech use since 1999.

They are:

Actively modernizing

Moving from local/server‑based deployment toward containers

Building new services on AWS ECS

Not sitting on stagnant legacy code

This is a Microsoft‑centric engineering culture operating in AWS.

What You’ll Be Doing

Architecture Leadership (C# Heavy)

Define service boundaries, APIs, async workflows

Review designs and code with long‑term scalability in mind

Unblock engineers when complexity hits

The search has surfaced too many systems‑operations candidates.

This team needs an engineer who can actually guide developers at the code and architecture layer.

Cloud‑Native Runtime Ownership (AWS / ECS)

Partner with IT (they have AWS knowledge, limited CI/CD depth)

Help shape Infrastructure-as‑Code (Terraform / CloudFormation)

Harden observability and resiliency in production

You’ll bridge engineering and operations — but your lens is application‑first.

AI-Enabled Engineering Enablement

Help engineers use AI tools without eroding system thinking

Assess when tools are production‑ready vs hype

Modern Delivery Model

Kanban workflow (weekly cadence)

Building new services (not just maintaining old ones)

Supporting migration from local deployments to containerized cloud runtime

What You Need

8+ years professional software engineering

Strong architectural ownership in SaaS environments

Hands‑on container experience in AWS (ECS preferred)

Understanding of how systems behave in production

US‑based (required)

Bonus:

Regulated environment experience (SOC2, FERPA, COPPA)

Container orchestration migrations

What’s in It for You?

$175K–$185K base

10% bonus

401(k) with match

Full medical / dental / vision

Remote (US‑based)

But the real value?

You get to:

Architect modern cloud‑native systems

Guide engineers without being buried in feature tickets

Help shape container and CI/CD evolution

Work on a platform impacting millions of K–12 students

Join a team that’s building forward, not defending the past